Join us for ECK IM SAVANE at Promenaden Eck on Saturday night for a special night of Cosmik Grooves from the Motherland and beyond. The collectiv Tropical Timewarpwith BestMate? and Bela Patrutzi will heat things up with their impressiv vinyl collection and will give service with an Afro beat – Afro funk mix then Léon Leon from FINOW ZOO and dj zhao will take us deep into the night with their multi-dimensional drum science.

And on Sunday, we come together for Umbenennungsfestival(renaming festival),on the block where the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884 took place, to enjoy the afternoon and agitate for refugee rights, against Pegida, and the changing of the historic “Mohrenstr.” (N***er Street) to “Nelson Mandela Strasse”. There will be many speakers and artists, and like last time i will contribute with a dj set and a talk on Culture as a Global Process and Dismantling Eurocentricity.

Mashup, an exhibition of artworks by contem- porary artists from Africa generated during the research and exhibition project Mashup the Archive at Iwalewahaus in Bayreuth, Germany.

It’s nice to get booked for the core of what i do. Will be playing alongside many very talented artists such as Miss Eve, Otieno Gomba, Délio Jasse, Raphael Kariuki, Nita., Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Simon Rittmeier, Kevo Stero, Pamela Sunstrum, and Uche Uzorka.

The climate in Nairobi is cool and perfect all year round, despite being on the equator, due to its high altitude. The East African Rumba sound is also often cooler, sans the fiery horn sections of Congolese Soukous. The focus here is on a reduced palette of rhythmic guitar and vocal refrains over driving, insistent 4 on the floor kicks. The motorik, hypnotic motifs and modular progression of this original minimalist dance music here is mostly from 1950s to 1970s, and i play it in the seamless style of techno.

The Guardian fails to pin-point the unique significance of Funky: it was the very first time that explicitly African rhythm patterns had been prominently used in, and defined, an entire style of “Western” dance music. This failure is part of a larger pattern. In the following sentence, the journalist clearly denigrates African-ness as the least significant aspect of Funky, in typically Euro-centric fashion: “…’a make-do sound’, patched together by and for an uneasy alliance of shiny-shoes “real house music”-lovers, grime kids craving something less macho, hipsters looking for a new buzz after dubstep, and those raised on the riotous party sounds of dancehall, soca and west African music.” ——— the influence of African music is a less important factor than “real house”, than grime, than hipsters (!); and also less important than Dancehall and Soca. And in this sentence, African-ness is completely omitted: “All were united by a pumping house undercurrent, clattering grime and dancehall rhythms, and car-window-rattling bass” ——– Since Funky started to get coverage, journalists have referred to the style as mostly or entirely Caribbean derived — But if you know music, you know the beats in UK-Funky is much, MUCH more derived from African music than from Dancehall or Soca.

don’t have time for cover art and little write ups, so you will have to deal with the list dump style of this post (cover art and sometimes scans of liner notes should be in most archives). Includes 2 versions of the much sought after and rare Dogon vinyl, with substantial differences in tracklisting, which among the first wave of awesome recordings was never reissued on CD.

For the uninitiated, OCORA was one of, if not the, most well researched and presented labels which dealt with indigenous sounds from all over the earth, and i made the promise, which i still do intend on keeping, of making the entire past catalog of 500+ recordings available on this blog. there has been quite a few South Asian and African posts already, just look for it. To be continued.

“Heart of Light” – the last words uttered publicly by democratically elected first president of newly independent Congo Patrice Lumumba at his inauguration address, 3 months before his murder by Belgium and CIA, because he dared to oppose the Western forces of oppression and planned to keep the wealth of the Congo for the Congo. Freedom and hope was killed in 1961, with disastrous consequences that last until today, but The Heart of Light can never die…

A few out of print treasures from Ocora (RIP), probably the best global music label ever in terms of selection, recording quality, documentation and general dependable professionalism (The French perhaps always were the colonialists who paid the most attention to the cultures of those they conquered and continue to exploit, with Napoleon’s encyclopedia of Egypt still being the most comprehensive hundreds of years later), were first uploaded on my old blog a long time ago, and now have been revived by the kind soul who runs SEANCE (a place where you will find much more amazing gems). I will also be re-upping many things from Africa, Asia, Middle East, South America, etc. in the days to come.

A hybrid musical entity made of dj and live instrumentation consisting of 2, 3, 4, or 5 members, NGOMA Soundsystem fuses Ancestral Rhythms, Acoustic Textures, and Urban Bass Pressure. Drawing from both the wealth of sonic traditions from Africa and beyond as well as up-to-the-minute street sounds worldwide, NGOMA Soundsystem exists in the tension between electronic composition and live improvisation, creating unique “Ancient-Futurist” musical experiences for both concert hall and club, often at once mind expanding and dance-floor smashing.

this recording is a 1 hour studio edit of the 3 hour live performance at Fusion Festival:

In the era of branded lifestyle packaging, still sometimes something happens which makes us question our ideas of who makes/listens to what, what that means, where the lines are drawn, how this informs the construction of social identity, whose values are projected by which aesthetic, and which “genres” are assigned to what class and ethnic group. I think the release of this documentary film may be one of those times, and i hope this mix which goes with it is one of those things, demonstrating the connectedness between Rock and Roll and its African roots, between power chords and dance beats, between decades past and today, between defiant youth in London and defiant youth in Zimbabwe – and that the same rhythmic blood and spirit of revolt runs in all of our veins.

these 75 minutes include exclusive mashups and re-edits, and go from Punk to heavily Africanized Rebel Rock to Post-Punk, Dance-Punk, Political Dub, Punk Step, 60s Afro-Garage Techno, Bass Music and beyond, features remixes of Congotronics and a couple of tunes not from the motherland, but surely in keeping with the Afro-Punk spirit.

In Yoruba spiritual traditions (contemporary Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria) as well as its descendant Afro-diasporic faiths like Vodou, Santeria/Lukumi and Candomble, Eshu is the divine messenger between Gods and Man, the gatekeeper, protector of travelers, guardian of the Crossroads, offering choices and reveals possibilities. Often identified by the number three, and the colours red & black, Eshu represents the balance of nature, Day and night, creation and destruction, old age and youth. Yet more than conduit between this and other worlds, Eshu is also a spirit of Chaos and a devious trickster, playing games and serving up mischief with the ultimate aim of waking people up and teaching them lessons.

So, in the spirit of Eshu, FUSION 3 represents the balance between traditional and modern, “east” and “west”, listening and dancing. This mashup album stands at the crossroads between the musical worlds of Yoruba talking steel drums, Cuban piano, Indonesian Gamelan, Cameroon Mbira (thumb piano), Black Panther poetry, South African Jazz, etc., and the House and Techno club sounds of today.

I think it will play a few tricks on minds which insist on seeing the world in discontinuously separate compartments.

Whereas the first Fusion volume was global traditional music fused with Dubstep and Grime, this second one clocks in at 105 BPM and explores the marriage of ancestral sounds and mid-tempo dancehall/moonbahton/hiphop derived beats. Some of the juxtapositions include Mongolian Throat Singing with screwed Techno, Uzbek vocal pop with Norwegian Skweee, Tribal African chanting over Hiphop, and Brazillian tinged percussion with Angolan Urban Beats. The mood is often overcast and cloudy with occasional bursts of heavy thunderstorms.

The FUSION series is decidedly more for listening compared to the dancefloor oriented NGOMA series, but there are certainly some bangers in here for you to scrunch up your face to, alongside more tripped out and lyrical numbers.

the first 8 volumes in this Reboot.fm radio series. for tracklisting please go to the soundcloud pages for each show. to download of course simply click the downward aarow on the right side of the player for each show.

NGOMA SOUNDSYSTEM

a trio of DJ, Percussion, and Reed instruments, NGOMA Soundsystem fuses past and future, east and west, ancestral rhythms and hyper-modern sound. Ngoma Soundsystem connects the hottest dance music styles new and old from the Motherland and beyond with improvised rhythmic and melodic invention. Dynamic interplay of live instrumentation with dj and computer makes NGOMA Soundsystem a versatile and powerful musical entity operating against all fictional cultural borders and illusions of separation.

DJ ZHAO

DJ Zhao brings the best contemporary and classic dance music together from all five continents, with focus on Africa. With in depth selections spanning wildly different times and places, DJ Zhao’s remix and mashup work directly connects "East" and "West", acoustic and electronic, traditional and hyper-modern. Amateur ethno-musicologist and professional booty shaker, Zhao is an International Ambas...sador of BASS not only talking about, but demonstrating through raw sound experience, the underlying unity of all earth cultures.

Born and Raised in Beijing, China, and active as DJ and sound curator in the US since 2000, Zhao has organized critically acclaimed long running events focusing on Improvisation and Sound Art as well as Techno. After relocating to Berlin, Germany, and starting the Ngoma collective, Zhao has been performing regularly at clubs and festivals including: